The Dear Old Udy 
Of Eighty-sixth Street 



The Dear Old Lady 
Of Eighty-sixth Street 



A Memoir Of 

Laura Skeel Pomeroy 

Obiit., Augu^ 23rd. 191 I 



Shaema* O Sheel 

Publisher of Books in Good Taste 

124 West Nineteenth Street 

New York City 



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One Hundred Copies of this Memoir have 
been made and the type distributed. Thii ii 



No.- 



JCZ 



Dedicated to 
Miss Edith Lloyd Honigman 
Who devotedly sewed our departed friend 
in her last days, and is keeping her memory 
green by a revival of the Litde Salon of 
Eighty-sixth Street 



Copyright, 1912 

by 
Shaemai O Sheel 



jcci.A3iaosy 



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THE DEAR OLD LADY 
OF EIGHTY-SIXTH STREET 



The Dear Old' Lady of Eighty-sixth Street is 

' dead. Someone clipped an obituary notice and sent 

It to me ; belated ; and the frail mortality of that rarest 

spirit had been returned to earth many days before 1 

knew it. 

1 would not have felt the irrevocability of it so 
keenly had I known she w^as dying, had I been able to 
serve her in any slight way in those hours when her 
eyes were taking leave of the light. Yet in a general 
way I had known that she was going. She had 
moved from the scene of her long benefaction to a 
distant quarter of the Bronx ; and before that she had 
been forced to yield her frailty to a wheel-chair, and 
give over the brave effort of the daily walk. Her 
deafness, her failures of memory, had grown on her, 
too, so that toward the last of her residence in Eighty- 
sixth Street, fewer and fewer, had, gathered about her 
on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Slowly, softly, one 
might sav healthily, she had fallen away. It was in- 
deed the expected which was told in this obituary- 
clipping; and the shock I received was rather from 
the realization of how long 1 had neglected visiting her, 
kept away by the atfairs which life heaps upon one 
illimitably, than from any surprise at the event. I had 
even spoken with others of ** her children " about the 



apparent imminence of her departure, and it was re- 
markable that none of us felt truly sad in that thought, 
but felt rather that the close of her earthly life would 
but round out with a sweet faint note that melody 
which her life had been, that rare pure song. 

Mrs. Laura Skeel Pomeroy, the obituary named 
her in full ; said she was 78 years old ; and the widow 
of Walter H. Pomeroy, " a Greek scholar and literary 
critic." In each of these details there was addition to 
my knowledge of her, tho I had known her four years ; 
but I never thought of questioning or inquiring about 
her. The sense of a wholly genuine, wholly satisfac- 
tory personality is so rare that I for one let my heart 
rest in it with a grateful content. 1 had not even 
known that she was " herself a sculptor and artist '* ; 
it was enough to know her in the role of which this 
inch-and-a-half obituary speaks thus in conclusion: 
** For more than twenty years Mrs. Pomeroy had one 
of the few salons in New York." 

So summary, so brief a sentence, exhausts the 
news-value of this woman's life-work! Let us not 
quarrel with this, nor the fact that a murder, a divorce, 
a malfeasance in public office, would be of ten, one 
hundred, one thousand times greater value by the 
newspaper standard. Rather let me, one of the lea3t 
of her proteges, attempt, in my love and reverence, to 
indicate the unique value of her life, to explain a work 
that seems to me more beautiful than most, more im- 
portant than many of the loud-trumpeted benefactions 
of spectacular philanthropists, and worthy of note be- 
side the applauded achievements of politicians and 
statesmen ; to trace somewhat the influence that sprang 
from this little old lady wide-spreading and abundant 
as the fruit of a single apple-seed, incalculable, not 
obvious to the general eye, but real, most real and true ; 
an influence which consisted of subtle impressions on 
human spirits, and must therefore be vital, part of life 



itself — part of this American life now struggling from 
Chaos to Achievement. 

Twenty years, says the obituary; of which 1 
knew some four. The ground floor apartment of 
Number 202 We^ Eighty-sixth Street, within hearing 
of New York's main throbbing artery, Broadway; 
peaceful enough, for New York; amid the assured if 
not always artistic comfort of the Upper We^ Side; 
near the beautiful Riverside; and most convenient to 
the subway; there she lived; thereto we went on 
Wednesday evenings, and some of us also on Sunday 
afternoons. Who were we? That is not to be 
answered briefly; for, generally speaking, we were 
likely enough to mclude anybody at all who had even 
a single intere^ in life beyond bread-and-butter. 
Greater diversity never was in any salon ; and as to 
numbers, I believe I would be astonished, in spite of 
my knowledge of the case, if the Recording Angel 
could show me a summary of those weekly gatherings. 
Yes, it would be a record impressive as to numbers 
alone ; but how astonishing it would be on the side of 
personalities, diversities, incongruiues ! — the all incon- 
gruities gently blended in the benign presence of the 
Dear Old Lady. And all this was unknown to the 
newspapers, to all the public pnnts, and to the great 
general public itself; and all this was here in New 
York - in the city of loudness, this quiet shrine ; in the 
city of selfishness, this place where the heart was 
washed with white hands ! Wonderful, when you 
stop to think of it! 

Consider the stream that flowed hither; some- 
times a mere handful, sometimes a company that 
crowded the little parlors uncomfortably, and flowed- 
over into the halls ; scores in number. 1 will name no 
names, for memory might play me false and cause 
omissions which would put the account out of propor- 
tion. But as to kind: there were painters, sculptors, 



decorators, illustrators; there were, poets and story- 
writers; there were composers, players of all instru- 
ments, singers ; reciters and actors ; professionals living 
by the arts, amateurs and dilletanti. stndents galore; 
there were Hindu Swamis, Christian clergymen, de- 
votees of the "New Thought", atheists. Catholics, 
Jews ; there were generally sufficient representatives of 
the tribe of willing entertainers, grave and gay, accept- 
able and difficult to accept; and there were the sileint 
ones, whose talent was not for the applause of a com- 
pany; nay, even enough who had no talent at all, but 
some sort of intere^ in that gift denied them. Wel- 
come as the winds to a great generous tree, we flowed 
there, anyone who had once entered being privileged 
to bring or send others without limit of number. 
Automatically the circle spread; like a ripple on the 
water, irregularly, sometimes most surprisingly; and i in 
all those years there were few groups of artists or 
amateurs, in all the arts about New York, who did niot 
contribute to the free brotherhood of this fraternity; 
there were few lonely heart-sick strugglers who did nbt 
sooner or later find the way to this warm glowing cen- 
ter of hope and appreciation. 

So they came; from everywhere; an astonishing 
congeries. And what did they? Sometimes nothing 
but talk, and, at ten o'clock, drink chocolate and eat 
little cakes. Sometimes there were a very few num- 
bers of entertainment; and often enough a constant 
flow, for over two hours, of delightful, even brilliant, 
performance. Nothing was arranged ; you arrived any 
time after nine o'clock, uncertain whether it would be 
a dull night or a full one. If there were musicians, 
•ingers, reciters, poets, present, they generally con- 
tributed with little hesitation. The audience was a 
keen one; affectation was quietly punished, sincerity 
was rewarded if it was not dull. The conversation 
alone was often enough a sufficient delectation ; clever 



people were there, and if it was not an informing talk 
you had with your perhaps newly introduced neighbor, 
it was like to be a light and witty exchange. Of 
course there were bores; but then the Little Salon of 
Eighty-sixth Street was only a human institution! 

And the Dear Old Lady ! So frail, so slight, yet 
so bravely coming forward to welcome you ! Simply 
dressed but richly, generally in brown and black, not 
behind the times as to fashion, but with quaint, knitted 
fingerless gloves ; she was alert to make you at home, 
to introduce you — often to your be^ friends ! — to ask 
you to perform; and she was tactful, even a trifle 
pathetically so, in keeping to the shadows when things 
were running smoothly and did not need her urgence. 
I have spoken of "her children"; but that does not 
well express our feeling. We loved her; but it was 
as a companion ; a friend ; she was not old ! She was 
one of us ; young, ever young ! 

Her little parlors were lined with books ; they 
had belonged to one of whom she often spoke, never 
sad!y, never sentimentally, always with the slighted 
lowering of her voice, with an indefinable undertone 
that struck deeply, beautifully to the heart. A little 
frail woman nearing her eightieth year ; slight, brown, 
beautiful as a leaf turned brown in its good Autumnal 
time; and she had once been a fresh, pink-and-white 
fluttering girl, all the world morning to her, and her 
lover claiming her. There is often enough a repul- 
sion in old age which persists thru all effort at rever- 
ance ; but not so here. I used often to think of what 
young womanhood, what young loverhood had been 
hers; and 1 thought how terrible the loss of the man 
she spoke of so often, so tenderly, must have been ; 
yet how truly great that love must have been, since she 
could make, in these widowed years, a great beautiful 
thing of her lonely life, dying not with him, but living 
for him, making him immortal in the immortality she 



gained for herself, an immortality that is a flow of in- 
fluence thru hundreds of souls made stronger and 
lovlier by her. 

For, having flowed to these little parlors so, hav- 
ing rested them there in bright and hopeful company, 
having been refreshed in a score of ways, having not 
least (nor necessarily most) of all been made to love 
this noble exemplar of good works; how could the 
scores of young artists and workers go forth but better 
in scores of ways? I am not naming names; but 
there are painters and poets, decorators and illustrators, 
singers and players, and what other sort of worthy 
strivers I know not, who to-day are honored, are suc- 
cessful, are well known and deservedly-known; and 
who when they were students, strugglers, youth poised 
between hope and fear on the waves of the world ^ 
went for comfort, companionship, recreation and in- 
spiration, to the Little Salon of Eighty-sixth Street, 
there for them, by grace of the brave young heart of 
Laura Skeel Pomeroy. 

And think how much may be of importance to 
this whole land of America in these results. We are 
awaiting our artists ; yes, and for the mo^ part, hold- 
ing the doors tight shut against their advent! Here 
was a door open. We are planning an America 
truly cuhured; yes, and for the most part leaving our 
house in anything but order! Here was a house 
beautiful. We are lamenting the vulgarity of our 
wealthy class, the imitation vulgarity of our poor ; yes, 
and what are we doing for those who bear the light of 
good taste? Here was a place where it sparkled, 
whence it radiated. Here in short was a unique, a 
wholly good institution, created by one frail sweet old 
lady, one pathetic widow strong to do, not to die, for 
her love; here were refreshed uncounted weary; here 
were kindled unknown sparks. Keen-minded, unor- 
thodox, bravely agnostic and questioning, essentially 



faithful and God-loving, she faced the inevitable decay 
and death without a tremor, girt with good works. 
The Christian may say : " Here was a life which 
deserved a reward in Heaven!" The agnostic may 
say : " Here was a life which needs none ! " — 1 say 
and 1 know not how many lips will say with me: 
Blessed be the memory of The Dear Old Lady of 
Ejghty-sixth Street. 

SHAEMAS OSHEEL, 



WARJ^ja 1912 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



e 014 221 764 8^ 




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